And you thought Refrigerator Cat was tenacious? Have a look at this moggie who opens five—count them, five—doors to get to the outside.
As The Atlantic notes, where this video appeared (thanks to reader Michael for the alert):
It’s not exactly The Cat Who Wished to Be a Man territory, but this extraordinarily determined and observant feline from Skopje, Macedonia, appears to have some unusual human-world savvy. “Leon the cat,” according to YouTube uploader Marjan Kirovski, performs the trick of opening five doors in a row by jumping up on their handles and pulling them down with his paws until the catches release. Then he bats at each cracked door until it swings open, allowing him his next few steps of freedom.
And your special bonus for Caturday: a moggie who wants water really bad! (From Peter Brock via Emma Hunt via Michelle Beissel):
Headline news in Cincinatti:
Chessy climbs tree to find squirrels, birds
Unfortunately, no photos of Chessy.
The uploader [& Leon the cat of course] live in Skopje, Macedonia. Marjan makes this comment because so many commentators think he [Marjan] is speaking Russian:- Leon isn’t a Russian cat he has Macedonian blood he was found on a street in front of a market, how to open doors he though him self while watching us. We love him very much!
I gather the language is “Macedonian” in the same branch as Bulgarian & Serbian
HERE’S a very interesting Wiki on the language & the associated political twists & turns of that part of the former Yugoslavia
Yes Macedonians and Serbians can speak to each other as the languages are identical.
That cat is the Alexander the Great of cats, being Macedonian and all 🙂
Not just perseverance, but also practice, kitteh has done that before.
I know a dog that opens doors by leaping up and clawing at the window. She will do this for minutes at a time until her paw accidentally hits the handle and the door opens.
After five years! she still hasn’t figured out that it’s the handle that opens the door. She still claws in a frenzy at the window until the door opens.
He hasn’t figured it out for the same reason that cats think that to get fed they need to pace back and forth underfoot meowing loudly. It works.
And now I know why it’s considered painful to do a spinal tap.
+1
If the house had doorknobs, this kitty couldn’t do this.
Which brings up the question about why door knobs seem so prevalent in the US, while in many other countries I’ve visited handles seem pretty standard?
Door handles have much more utility. If your hands are full you can still open them by using an elbow, a finger, or even a foot. If holding a grocery bag you can open it using your clenched hand still gripping the bag, even using the weight of the bag to assist.
So what’s with all the knobs in the US? Is it a symptom of the same industrial economic logic that foisted awful bread, awful cheese, and awful beer on Americans?
Probably a lot of cats in the US want to know.
Not true! My sister had a cat who was quite capable of opening doors having door knobs. She would jump up and hold the narrow portion of the door knob in her paws, and rock back and forth, turning the knob until it unlatched…and out she went.
Never underestimate feline ingenuity.
Indeed. Altho lever handles catch the pockets of lab coats more readily.
When we moved into a lab at U Pittsburgh’s Brave New World-esqueBiomedical Science Tower we quickly found that we could barely get a grip on the brushed stainless spherical doorknobs, and so to increase the coefficient of friction we’d wrap lab tape around them. Then the nighttime cleaning crew would come around and remove the tape (facepalm).
In my previous house I actually had to replace all the lever handles with round knobs to prevent the cat from letting herself out.
My wife had a Siamese cat that routinely opened doors with round knob style openers. Her technique was just as Cliff Melick described above. She understood precisely what was necessary to open the door and could do it in seconds anytime she wanted.
She was also an excellent thief. She would sit on a counter top near to the kitchen table during meals and steal food off the nearest plate. She had a knack, as many cats seem to, of being able to recognize when no one was paying attention to her and strike only at such moments. Her snatches where almost never observed, even though everyone was expecting it! Of course, being a Siamese, she was also slightly nuts. Great cat.
One of these days I need to film my cat Philly, whose preferred method of drinking is to jump up and let a trickle of water cascade off his head into the sink where he laps it up.
When she was younger, my cat tried her best to open the front door by jumping up and hanging off the handle, just like the moggie in the video. She was quite tenacious about it, making repeated attempts. Unfortunately for her (and fortunately for the security of my house), she never mastered the mysteries of the deadbolt lock.
I’m still trying to grok the floor plan of a house that has five doors between any room and the outside.
We’ve had two cats that could do this. Their lives did not overlap. The first cat was a 30 pounder and was long enough and strong enough to open doorknobs. The second cat (15 lbs), still alive, can only do levers.
Both cats had companions and neither companion learned the skill, but they did take advantage of the open doors.
I doubt the other cat didn’t learn the skill. It was probably just lazy and preferred to let the other cat do it. Or, maybe it was the boss, the brains behind the operation, and the door opening cat was just muscle.
It could also be a matter of size now that I think about it. Both door opening cats were long enough to remain on their hind legs and push or pull the door open while holding the handle down. They were good recognizing whether the door needed to be pushing or pulled. We installed a locking handle on the family room door to control access to the rest of the house. My wife occasionally fails to re-lock it. The cat usually checks, he doesn’t bother to check if I’m the one that came through the door.
I can’t tell from your reply, so I just wanted to clarify that my comment was an attempt at humor. I know. I need to work on that.
Your speculations do seem plausible, but mine . . . not so much. An attempt at humorous anthropomorphizing.
Your cats sound like great fun. Are they treating you well?
Ray Sent from my iPad.
I love these videos that show various animal intelligence. This cat is a living thing learning to adapt to its surroundings in real time! Somebody’s posted a video of an octopus that has learned to open a jar for food. These aren’t stupid pet tricks. They are signs of intelligence (and maybe the beginnings of consciousness) in this continuum of life of which we are a part.
Gotta love cats.